CHAPTER V
RENTS AND SERVICES
DESPITE the fact that both free and serf spent much of
their time at similar labour in the fields there was a pro-
found gulf between them in other ways. Once the free
man had paid his yearly rent it was not often that anything
further except of a trifling nature was required of him by his lord.
The serf, however, found things very much more oppressive.
Not only had he to pay his rent, but a number of other small cash
payments were exacted. Miss Neilson, in her Customary Rents,
has given a full account of such payments, and it will suf&ce our
purpose to note that they are all charges upon the serf for this or
that small favour or privilege. Before he could touch even a
piece of dead wood he had to pay his yearly "wood-penny"; he
was forced to take a hen or some eggs at set seasons to the manor
house as a payment for the privilege of keeping poultry about his
own house; when he sold one of his beasts the lord frequently
received a part of the purchase price. On all sides he found him-
self unable to do what his free neighbour could do. As is well
known, his lord demanded a small payment when the serf wished
to give one of his daughters in marriage; he could not let his boy
go away from the manor to be taught by some friendly priest or
at a nearby school without again putting his hand in his pocket
—the restrictions under which he lived were many; and, although
many of them were petty, yet in sum they bulked large, and
influenced his whole life.
Some of them, however, were far from being petty even in
themselves, and were a constant charge on his energies and his
pocket, and a constant reminder to him of his servile condition.
He was continuously forced to put his lord's affairs first and his
own second, and to find pence and shillings for reasons he could
not have understood, even if they had been explained to him.
Such a state of affairs had gradually evolved as a consequence
of the introduction and development of the manorial system in
England. Little by little, throughout those parts of England that
became manorialised, a state of affairs between lord and serf
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